Re: New fusion power system test creates 300,000 degrees C plasma

On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:05:11 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
<jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:

On 11/30/24 18:10, john larkin wrote:

On Sat, 30 Nov 2024 11:47:25 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
<jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
 

On 11/30/24 03:23, john larkin wrote:

On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 23:30:22 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
<jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
>

On 11/29/24 23:03, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
>

On 11/29/24 21:04, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
>
[...]

It would be lovely to have 50kWTh or so of PU238 in the basement,
if it could be made cheaply enough. Power for a lifetime for the
whole house and then some.

>
...but the lifetime might not be very long if any got out.
>
>

>
If, if. Such arguments can be used to prove anything.
>
I've got a diesel-powered car in the basement garage. Fully tanked,
it contains 60kg of fuel, good for 2.4GJ or so. Imagine the havoc
that could cause, if it got loose. For reference, a stick of dynamite
is about 1MJ.

>
I've seen what happened when builders accidentally set fire to a tank of
diesel far bigger than that.  It burned slowly and steadily until it set
fire to the roof of the house - then the house burned down.  Nobody was
injured or killed, the mess was easily cleaned up and a new house built
on the site.
>
It wasn't like the sudden release of energy you would get in a fuel-air
explosion (quite difficult to initiate with diesel without specialist
knowledge) and there wasn't a lot of residual toxic contamination.
>
>

>
OK. Now back to small 238Pu fuelled units. Why would you expect
anything to go wrong if the Pu was contained in a hermetic canister?
>
Jeroen Belleman

>
If it lost cooling, it would melt through anything. Then you'd have
plutonium slag and vapor all over your garage. The neighbors might
complain.
>
That's interesting: if you could confine some mass of 238, what would
its ultimate temperature be?
>

>
This isn't a nuclear reactor! It'd be only a few tens of kilowatts,
about the power level of a car engine. Those don't melt down, do
they?

 
They do when the water cooling system fails.
 

>
As for the ultimate temperature of a quantity of 238Pu, make up the
balance of heat in over heat out. A fresh load releases about 560W/kg.

 
By "confine" I meant no heat loss. Half-life is 88 years, and there
will be additional heat from decay products.
 
560 watts for 100 years is about 2e12 joules. That gets it up to 55
billion K, if my math is right.
 
(US billions)
 
 

>
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
>
Jeroen Belleman (Wearing his Twain coat)

It's like electronic design. Splatter your brain all over the solution
space and invent things.